Publication Date:
2022-05-25
Description:
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2012. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of National Academy of Sciences for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110 (2013): 4435-4436, doi:10.1073/pnas.1302536110.
Description:
Predicting climate change is a high priority for society, but such forecasts are notoriously
uncertain. Why? Even should climate prove theoretically predictable---by no means
certain---the near-absence of adequate observations will preclude its understanding and
hence even the hope of useful predictions. Geological and cryospheric records of climate
change and our brief recent record of instrumental observations show that the climate
system is changeable on all time scales---from a few years out to the age of the earth.
Major physical, chemical, and biological processes influence the climate system on
decades, centuries, and millennia. Glaciers fluctuate on time scales of years to centuries
and beyond. Since the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide has been emitted through
fossil fuel burning, and it will be absorbed, recycled, and transferred amongst the
atmosphere, ocean, and biosphere over decades to thousands of years.
Repository Name:
Woods Hole Open Access Server
Type:
Preprint
Format:
application/pdf
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